Adrian City Commission delays vote on Heritage Park oil facility

Wednesday

Jan 23, 2013 at 5:00 PM

By John MulcahyDaily Telegram Staff Writer

ADRIAN — The Adrian City Commission voted 5-2 Tuesday to table a resolution to authorize city administrator Dane Nelson to enter into an agreement with Savoy Oil Limited Partnership to build a central oil production and processing facility in Heritage Park.

The resolution was tabled until the commission’s second meeting in February.

The proposed agreement would include allowing Savoy to install underground pipes on city-owned property to carry oil to the proposed facility from oil wells in the area.Traverse City-based Savoy, which has two oil exploration leases with the city, has found oil in one well on city-owned property close to M-52 a short distance south of Howell Highway.

The vote to table the resolution came near the end of the meeting. Eight members of the public spoke during a public comment session at the beginning of the meeting, all of them urging the commission to defeat the resolution or give it more study.

“I don’t quite understand how you can put a tank farm in a park,” said John Bancroft of Norvell Township in Jackson County. Bancroft said he is a member of a committee monitoring oil well development in the Irish Hills area.

Bancroft said flares used to burn off gases from the oil could be dangerous to people using Heritage Park, to patrons of a nearby movie theater and to residents of a mobile home park near Heritage Park.

Adrian resident John Kuschell said he was opposed to oil and gas drilling in the city and asked if the city would require Savoy to pay community impact fees for road damage by trucks, require bonding for reservoirs and to plug abandoned wells, develop a “reverse 911” system to warn residents if there were an environmental danger and equip and staff an emergency action team to respond to oil-related accidents.

Siena Heights University assistant professor of biology Thomas Wassmer, also a city resident, said the proposed facility, if it were built where Savoy already had drilled a dry well in the park, would be on a ravine and spills would threaten wetlands and water sources.

“Spills are bound to happen there and it will go right into that water,” Wassmer said.Wassmer also said there is danger from the transportation of the oil and from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality being short-staffed and oil companies are allowed to monitor themselves.

Madison Township resident Victoria Powell said the facility should not go in a public park.

“This is a public park and it is by and for the people, so how you could consider (this) appalls me,” Powell said.

Sister Carol Coston of the Adrian Dominican Sisters said she lives on Spielman Road in Adrian Township but the facility would be “just uphill” from the sisters’ motherhouse on Siena Heights Drive.

“The thought of having something like that just uphill from where we live is very unsatisfactory,” Coston said.

Most of the speakers urged the commission to take more time to learn about possible effects of the proposed facility and to organize a public forum on the topic.When it was their turn to speak, some of the commissioners said they were not unaware of the issues.

“To think we’re completely uneducated on the subject is not (fair) to the commissioners,” commissioner Cary Carrico said.

However, commissioner Julie Berryman Adams said, “I do feel like I don’t know enough about this.”

Responding to some public comments after the vote, Nelson said, “This is not a big secret.”

“There’s been public meetings and nobody is trying to do a fast one,” Nelson said.

After the meeting, both DuMars and Gallatin said they voted against tabling the resolution because they felt they understood the issues and were ready to vote.

DuMars also said after the meeting he did not know what the city might do regarding a public forum on the topic since the vote to table the issue had just taken place.

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